She stopped her hasty strut and turned to face me. “Promise? Because I can’t be with you wherever you go. And if the system thinks it needs to protect you, specifically, then I would be a failure of a Custodian if I didn’t at least make you try your best. So you swear it?”
“I swear.” Even though I wanted to be a magical girl, with all the glitter, cute dresses, and bombast that implied, I could hold myself back for my girlfriend.
My cover was probably going to be blown in any number of other stupid ways. Maybe I’d shrug off a werewolf’s punch in their warform. Maybe I’d accidentally use more spells than a level 7 should reasonably have access too.
Ooh, yeah, that last one is definitely going to be a problem.
After ensuring that I really, really meant what I was saying, and sealing the promise with a kiss that left Addy blushing, she led me on a brisk pace throughout the chimera of a building that apparently held the entire academy, plus amenities.
“That way are the main lecture halls which are important to us. To the left you’ll find a cafeteria, and above that the dorms. Straight ahead you’ll find the workshops and laboratories. Those are important for Custodians because it lets us commission specific gear, hire promising talent straight away, or set up longer lasting contracts and investments. To the right are the gyms — mundane, magical, Custodian —, club rooms, Loch Ness 2, a swimming pool, and other amenities.”
“Loch Ness 2?”
“It’s an aquarium for alien fauna and flora, a test to see how well it meshes with earthly lifeforms, how resilient to a magic-deprived environment and how invasive it is.”
“All in one building?”
“Yes. And?”
“Feels a bit cramped, y’know.”
“I thought all universities are like this,” she countered, to which I had to say ‘fair’. We both had a sample size of one to base our experiences off of. “To the double-right are the offices, the security precinct, the warehouse of weapons and dangerous tools, the containment facility, and… The Cauldron.”
We entered the cafeteria just as she got to the end of her last sentence. There was a hole in the middle of it, wide enough that jumping across would be a challenge, and continuing down for at least a mile. The pinprick of light that was the exit out the other side could have been a figment of my imagination, that’s how small it was. The regular cafeteria-goers didn’t seem bothered, not by the hole, and not by the platform in the middle being loaded with all kinds of exotic weapons, ammunition, and other military supplies by a crew of gnomes. Their barrels, crates, and shipping containers seemed to never get full. With some nervousness, I noted that the entire cafeteria staff was made up of Custodians.
“So that’s The Cauldron,” I said, peering past the platform into the winding abyss. “At this point, it’s gotta be a tic. Or a fetish.”
“What?”
“Nothing!” I squinted at Addy. “So, what’s on the other side of… The Cauldron?”
“You don’t wanna know,” she said a bit too quickly.
“And what if I did?”
“Then I’d tell you that whatever the system thinks might happen to you, that place is a few steps worse. We all have to go down there one day, but only the crazy or the desperate volunteer for a deployment into The Cauldron. I’ve heard Custodians deliberately ignore personal quests that would send them down there. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. It’ll just mess with your emotional charge.”
Of course. Because trying not to think of the mysterious place named The Cauldron wasn’t going to mess with me at all. Unless, of course, knowing the exact details was somehow even worse.
I shivered, and followed Addy along.
We took a far right, stalking up and around a number of corridors until we were faraway from the main body. Barely anyone came this way. This area had the smell and feel of an office rather than a magical school building.
She knocked on a door twice. It opened, beckoning both of us inside. A mousey man was sitting behind a desk, a few wisps of hair combed over his head like a cage keeping his baldness at bay. He was mousey in a literal sense, two round and thin fuzzy ears poking out from under thick rimmed glasses.
“I am here to resume my enrollment,” Addy stated flatly.
“Resume? Do you have form R-43 filled out already?” Addy handed him a small stack of papers, all penned in with the most atrocious shorthand possible.
Wait, that isn’t shorthand, her writing is just… that bad.
Definitely gonna have to work on autographs then. Whenever those become necessary, which might be soon considering how much her online popularity has been picking up.
The mousey man hummed as he took in the pieces of paper. “Hmm, yes, very good. And addendum A-7 for extended leave?”
She handed him another piece of paper. Before he could raise his voice, she added yet another piece on top. This one was colored pink.
“My, my. Proof of emergency quest completion. Target?”
“Ur-mimic sprout #7.”
He made some annotations on his keyboard. “That makes you one of the rare few students that has completed an emergency quest before graduation. The Academy will love this. However, I have you noted down as a trustee for one Mason Holloway, who has been reserving a bed in the long-term medical ward for 763 days now. And you have noted the costs down as ‘deferred’, without marking the correct deferral form.”
At that, her head sank. The mousey man regarded her for a split second before continuing to type away.
“I will have to inform the dean of this, but after your accomplishments she’ll certainly endorse the re-enrollment. You’ll pay your teammate’s medical costs plus a minor fee in soulcoins, but you’re a Custodian, you won’t find much trouble there. Now, what about your lovely friend?”
“I’m new here,” I said, in what I was quickly realizing was going to become a trend. “Samantha Rubens. Also a Custodian.”
“Hmm, yes. Natural vampire or vampire essence?” He glanced nervously at my elongated canines. “Don’t answer. Sorry, just a habit. Bit of an odd match, you two.”
Addy and I shared a look.
“We make it work.”
“I am quite happy.”
He made a sound like swallowing a squeak. “I didn’t mean it like… regardless, congratulations. To the both of you.”
“I spoil my tanuki with only the most all-inclusive of massages.” I drawled the last word, leaning one arm on the table. “Coincidentally, I’m looking for some nice date locations. Cafes, restaurants, the works, open tomorrow around the evening. You probably know this place better than I do; anything you can recommend?”
“Caspers’ always has spots left,” he said offhandedly, typing away and handing me a brochure on places connected to the Academy. “For recreational purposes, you can visit any location within a five hundred kilometer radius via teleport against a nominal fee of one soulcoin. Now lessee, Rubens, ru-bens, ru… Huh. Odd.”
My heart froze. There was one other stupid way I could get outed as a lying Custodian: Bureaucracy. What if they had my file? What if things didn’t add up? Were they going to investigate me? Were they going to bar my entry, denying me the critical resources necessary for long term success?
“You are level seven, correct?”
“Yes?” No. Sorry.
“And to attain this level, your file says you did… nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.” He turned his screen around so I could see it. There was a picture of me, some basic notes about myself that anyone could find on my ID or driver’s license, and a big fat white page filled with a single word scrawled in a happy yellow: Nuffin’.
Nuffin’?
“She deserved every single level she gained and more, you have my word on that,” Addy said. “And if need be, the Lodge of the Lykan of Sault Ste. Marie will vouch for her.”
Hey girl, not sure how much weight bureaucracy puts into any one person’s word, but thanks for the vote of confidence.
“If you say so, miss top performer,” the mousy man said uneasily. Which was entirely not how I expected this to go. “I haven’t seen a file that redacted since, well, ever. Apologies, if I stepped on a sore tail.”
We navigated our way through a few more formalities — accommodations, Becca’s file that noted her as a mimic queen Custodian, stuff for the upcoming semester — finishing up just as the horizon started to hint at the start of another day. It was nearly four AM. Somehow, I was filled more with questions than exhaustion.
“That went unexpectedly well,” I said as Addy leaned against me.
“I was dreading it,” she said, voice muffled into my new, extra-baggy, spider-arm-proof hoody.
“He seemed nice enough though, for someone who communicates in addendums and special forms.”
“Don’t underestimate the power of bureaucracy,” she muttered. “But you’re right. Sometimes anticipation turns a mouse into an apocalypse. He could’ve really torn into me. I was lucky he was part of a friendly lodge.”
I blinked at her. “Wait, so it all went so smooth because you’re both part of the same in-group?”
“That’s how things go. Step off the white line and suddenly you’re an outlier, a problem, a hindrance.” She gave a big yawn. “You gotta know people to get anywhere. And my mentor knew a lot of people.”
“Seems a bit… I dunno, corrupt?”
“Welcome to Academia.” Addy took a deep breath as I scooped my hoodie over her head and pulled her up through the collar into a kiss. Her sleepy eyes went wide with surprise before fluttering nearly closed, half-lidded with the sedating sensation our lips seemed to produce whenever they met.
“I need some sleep,” Addy said quickly. “Just an hour or two.”
Which implies there’s time for things besides sleep.
“Let’s get to our rooms first,” I said, heart racing from feeling hers thumping so close to mine. “You gonna get out from under there?”
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“It’s cozy.”
A no, then. I waddled forward, giggling and laughing at the silliness of it all. Addy shapeshifted into a tanuki halfway to our dorms, to make it easier to carry her, and because she was red hot with embarrassment when a janitor gave us an odd look as we passed him by.
So cute. Downright adorable.
The dorm was… not much. Four small rooms connected to a central common room with an austere kitchen and a Tube TV. We were only three people — Addy, Becca, and I — but judging by the racks of dishes left out to dry and the fullness of a part of the fridge, our fourth roommate had already made themselves comfortable.
I looked down at Addy. She’d gotten so comfortable in my four-armed embrace that she’d dozed off.
“I guess we can choose who gets which room tomorrow,” I muttered, jangling my keys until one of the doors opened up.
The bed was austere, moderately sized, and reinforced against any possible abuse anyone could heave on it. Y’know, in case a werewolf decided to sleep on it in their warform. Or something.
I sighed, kicked my shoes off, and against the backdrop of a content tanuki breathing quietly on my chest, sleep claimed me all too quickly.
Chaos. Bureaucracy. Favoritism.
It really is just like a normal uni.
Convergence events. Giant bottomless pits. Secret identities.
Maybe not entirely. But for a while at least, I hope it stays normal.
+++
The day started like most of the days in my life, which is to say without Addy lying next to me. I was a bit miffed by that, and a bit worried. What if I’d nibbled on her so much that she decided we needed separate rooms? What if this was the beginning of the end of our relationship before it even started?
Terrible thoughts.
Luckily, a quick look at my frankly overloaded message inbox revealed her true intentions.
<
Such a busy tanuki! She definitely deserved a reward later today. “Kisses!”
Not two seconds later, I saw her typing, then remove what she was typing, think, then type again.
<>
I giggled. “Just type ‘kisses’ back, or some escalation thereof.”
She chose escalation. Halfway through reading her essay on what she thought was a reasonable next step after kissing (it wasn’t), there was a knock on my door. It sounded urgent.
I opened the door halfway through the third knock, revealing an adorably bookish woman. She had wavy hair red like a blister, flowing see-through robes over professionally baggy pants and a white blouse tightened at just the right places, and that stare… her eyes were like two blood-drops encased in glass. The book clutched in her hands gave off dark-academia vibes that framed her in a more sinister light, like an evil librarian, but the nervousness in her eyes made her seem more a victim of said evils. She looked my age, but it was hard to tell given her gray skin, and the elongated canines betraying her as a vampire when she opened her mouth to speak.
[Custodian Orianna, The Orb-Bound, Lvl 23]
“Is she still in there? With you? You smell like her. You should take a shower.”
“I…” Who? What? We didn’t even do anything; how can she smell Addy on — oh right, Custodian Senses. “Do I know you?”
“No.” She looked around nervously. “But you will. Hopefully. We should stick together from now on.”
“Shouldn’t we, like, introduce ourselves first? I’m Sam, Trigg— Custodian! Sam the Custodian.”
She cut me off immediately. “Irrelevant. The system already told me about you.”
I looked left and right, just to make sure there wasn’t any hidden camera or drone filming what I was really hoping was a prank. No cameras there. Bedroom door number four was open though, and I vaguely remembered the slippers she was wearing had been neatly sitting beside it yesterday. This must be my new roommate.
She seemed oddly focused on getting me to step aside so she could ensure that Addy wasn’t hiding under the floorboards. As is, she had to content herself with stealing frequent glances over my shoulder, completely missing the man-sized slime adhering to the ceiling right above her.
What an oddly paranoid individual.
I held up four hands in defense while rubbing my face with the rest. “Look, I just arrived yesterday and immediately got pulled into the convergence event and then four hours of bureaucracy, which was decidedly worse. Can we just take it slow? If I offended you somehow, I’m sure we can talk it out.”
“There is no talking with how things currently stand. Don’t you see the problem?” she asked while a dollop of Becca-slime slowly began to detach itself right above her head.
“I mean, I see a funny coincidence. Did we get roomed together because you have a vampire essence too? Wait, are you somehow related to Coyote? Is he behind all this?” She stared at me for a good long moment. “Do you ever blink?”
“It is not necessary for a vampire to blink,” she replied with an unblinking stare. “It helps us stay alert against predators. That you haven’t learned that we’re not the predators here, but the prey, shows that you need support. Need me.”
In that moment, the thread of Becca-slime that had been slowly dangling lower and lower finally snapped. An orange piece of her as large as a plum fell right on the back of Orianna’s neck, and slipped down beneath the fabric. Orianna shrieked, and did what I could only describe as a vampiric interpretative dance.
“What is that, what is that!?” she cried, looking up after the piece of Becca goop fell out of her pants.
“That’s Becca. Mimic Queen Custodian. Friend of mine. She’s got the room next to me and… I didn’t give you your keys, did I Becca? Crap, sorry.”
The orange slime detached from the ceiling in parts, turning into a pillar before then shlorping down back into her normal-sized pile of goo. I gave her the key and she dissolved it immediately. She made a pseudopod and tried to wave at Orianna.
The vampire’s eyes were wider than any I’d ever seen before. Then she grabbed my wrist. It wasn’t exactly a gentle motion, not loving, not hesitant, more like a mother finally catching her unruly child.
“This dorm is doomed. Come with me.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I am saving your life.”
“From what, my friends?”
“From a gruesome social death. The mimic is still barely acceptable. But the other girl? That one is dangerous. You were lucky that I arrived when I did. Now, will you stop… resisting…”
I stopped, watching the level 23 Custodian try and fail to move me along, even after really digging her feet in the carpeted floor. She had to have not a single point in Body scaling given that she only managed this much with a vampiric constitution. It was almost endearing, with how much she was trying.
Oh what the heck, I already woke up in wonderland. Might as well see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
+++
Her name was Orianna and she was a weird one. She stalked the hall like a predator who ate lectures for breakfast. But then she stopped to peek around corners, bowed to random groups of people who didn’t even bother glancing her way, and followed a route to the lecture hall that even I recognized as circuitous, despite walking through this place for the first time.
The Academy was huge. And also weirdly disjointed in a non-euclidean way. You could have three of the exact same offices next to each other while passing the hallway from left to right, but if you passed it from right to left, suddenly there was one packed hall with a huge projector, a smaller one where the fold-out wooden benches and seats were instead made of polished stone, and another where an alumni was busy telekinetically tossing mulch and dead plant matter out the window.
All of the lecture halls had at least a couple dozen people inside, plus a lecturer, so it was at least an efficient use of space. Not that The Academy needed space, with how big the main building plus adjacent faculties already was. There was plenty of open grassland outside as well if they ever needed to expand.
Maybe there was a problem with getting the building permits?
Regardless, it felt like behind every window was a wall, and behind every door was a room filled to the brim with the learned and the learning, but not the room you wanted.
It took Orianna three attempts until we both slunk into a lecture on… some sort of magic stuff that was way too advanced for me. Think advanced math courses, but the triangles have eyes and the numbers that are letters are probably symbols of some ancient mix of norse runes and alien language.
They might as well have been caveman scrawlings and doodles given how little they were telling me.
“Professor Sandman’s lectures are colloquially known as the snooze cruise,” she said, fluffing a small pillow over her unpacked notes. “Something in his voice makes you remember everything he says if you were asleep during his lecture. Very convenient, especially for a nonsense course every Custodian has to take.”
“Uh-huh.”
Seeing as I hadn’t prepared any pillow of my own, I rested my face on four palms while checking my face for any signs of ‘looking terrible-itis’ on my much-abused travel mirror. Two eyes were looking straight at myself, two were glazing over as more triangles appeared on the old whiteboard, and two focused intently on Orianna, leaving me just about at my upper comfortable limit in terms of mental load.
“So. Is there an Academy map I can download somewhere, or am I going to have to take a course on how to navigate higher dimensional hallways?”
“You can follow me around until you understand the underlying logic, junior.”
“So, there was a logic to when we were walking in circles earlier.”
“Of course. You need to walk two loops to break the Gordian Knot that is the path to the snooze cruise. I messed up of course, and walked a figure eight instead. Rookie mistake. But it’s a Tuesday.”
The non-euclidean paths to lecture halls change depending on the day. This… is going to lead to a lot of people arriving late anywhere, isn’t it? God, scheduling room-swaps around this must be an absolute pain.
“Couldn’t you ask the system to give you directions?” I asked.
“How would it do that?” she shot back. “I can’t afford to splurge on the minimap upgrade.”
Splurge… hold on a minute. “You’re level 23. It’s ten soulcoins. How can you not afford it? There was a convergence event twelve hours ago. I got over a hundred coins just from a single kill.”
“Lucky you. Some prankster cast a sleep spell on me.” She glared at me from her beige pillow.
“You could teleport somewhere else. Plenty of convergence events across the world these days” I said and she chuckled bitterly.
“I would if it were allowed, if skirting the non-combat rules for sub level-30s wasn’t risking a death knell to my enrollment, and professional career,” she said evenly. “Getting to the Academy is free. Getting out before you graduate… a bit harder. That’s what the mentor programs are for, but good luck getting a mentor who won’t exploit you as a cheap sidekick to clean up small groups of civvies during convergence events. They need the soulcoins as much as we do. The magitech tinkerers are constantly trying to get their hands on the same rare ingredients for their new magnum opus, which means everything gets so expensive the higher you go that even the level eighty and ninety Custodians are fighting for every soulcoin.”
I blinked at her. And checked my own stash of Soulcoins.
[Soulcoins: 342]
Yeah. Well. I almost had five times as much a few weeks ago. Goddang stupid mimic sabotage inflating the price of regen-potions.
Maybe Addy kept some in reserve? I’d feel terrible asking for a loan though.
“Any other ways to get soulcoins?”
“Gambling,” she said with a snicker. “Going into debt. Maybe get a job as an assistant to some tinkerer, or one of the few Academy-sponsored spots. Bit hard when you’re building towards a combat degree, but aren’t allowed to do actual combat.”
“Wow.” Just. Wow. What a uniquely screwed-up system.
“Which is why it’s important to create allies,” she said, neatly segueing into the one topic I was dreading to dive into nearly as much as academic debt-peonage. “You need to make sure you’re with the right crew. A crew that will support you, and expect support in turn.”
“If this is your pitch for making me break up with my girlfriend, then I’m afraid you’ll have to do a bit better.”
“She’s your girlfriend!?”
“Ahem.” The lecturer gave us both a wilting stare. “Some propriety, if you would. Some people are trying to sleep.”
I mouthed a ‘sorry’, turning to Orianna with a withering stare. She kept on blabbering, not seeming to understand the severity of her, what, request? Demand? Accusation?
“—think about it. We vampires are few, but all the more tightly knit. We have members in our cabal with a hundred years of experience in just about anything you could bother to ask them. They might be a bit out of touch, but that’s where the exchange happens! They teach you about the secrets of magic, and in exchange you teach them how to navigate photoshop, or LLMs, or what the current political landscape in Bolivia looks like. You won’t need anyone else, not a lodge that won’t fully accept you as one of theirs, not a luck-of-the-draw mentor, not that dangerous girl you’re flirting with—”
“Orianna.” She paused, shoulders hitching ever so slightly as all six of my eyes focused on her face. “Let me put it diplomatically: Say one more word about me or my relationship with Addy, and I will pick you up and spin you in a circle so hard you won’t find your way back to the dorm, let alone the nearest trash can, until the end of the semester. Savvy?”
Her stare was oddly fragile. She gulped and nodded once. Normally, I’d never have made my distaste for someone’s opinion known this directly, but today was different. I was different.
“Now,” I said, “riddle me this: Why do you think she is dangerous?”
“Because she is! Like a loaded gun, she walks one step away from oblivion. She is a razor in a candy jar, a nun-chuck in the hands of an overconfident teenager, a-a bomb.” Her whisper had turned loud enough that I was worried the lecturer might kick us out. I leaned in closer, playing into the idea that I was interested in her paranoid ramblings. “I… I have a spell. [Danger Sense]. It’s a passive, always on, and it does exactly what you think it does. I can feel people charge spells, channel large quantities of emotions. And she… she was charging anticipation all night, in her freaking sleep.”
“She’s looking forward to our date, dumbass.”
“I, you…” She squinted hard at me. “Huh?”
“Nope, sorry, not joking. Man, I am looking forward to it too. We’ll probably breeze through every halfway decent locale by the time the next semester starts.” It was the tail-end of June after all, the summer semester making way for a couple weeks of break before the fall-slash-winter semester began. That left Addy and I close to a month of fooling around before the pre-semester courses started up.
Probably gonna have to attend, like, all of those, considering I’m missing every single bit of magical education there is.
“What do you mean? The first day of the semester was yesterday.”
My heart seized.
“Oh, crap.” They don’t follow the same rhythm as in the UK.
I grabbed all my notes, neatly shoveling them into my backpack, eliciting an indignant ‘Mo!’ from Moe.
“I gotta go.”
“What?” Orianna looked panicked, as if it was somehow her fault. “Why?”
“You don’t understand. I haven’t looked at the curriculum. I haven’t joined a single seminar. And it is day two.” I am going to have to get through so many uncomfortable talks with the responsible professors.
I don’t even know what I want to learn.
I was interested in the architecture of this warped academy, for one. Probably going to figure out what I could do with magical vampire blood. There were definitely some mandatory Custodian courses out there, maybe a club or two I could join so I could understand what becoming a Custodian was even like for other people. Oh, and I was absolutely going to learn more about this vampire wereperson beef.
After all, whenever two groups were fighting, the first question I wanted to ask was: Why?
And the second: Qui bono?